Coming Home to the Four Streets by Nadine Dorries (books that read to you .txt) 📗

‘I will, Auntie Maura, I promise,’ he had said and he had managed to do just as she had asked. He never wanted to let her down especially after she said, ‘You’re such a good and special lad, little Paddy. The best in the four streets – along with our Harry, of course – you could be brothers, you two.’ And he had felt so filled with pride to think Maura would rank him alongside his best friend and personal hero, Harry, that he hadn’t wet the bed once since.

‘Are you wanting Auntie Maura?’ Paddy asked the woman now, feeling as though he was shrinking in size, caught as he was in the spotlight of the woman’s unfriendly gaze. She peered down at him as though he was something that had crawled out of a half-eaten apple.

‘Who are you?’ she asked him.

Paddy grinned, this was a question he could answer easily. ‘I’m little Paddy, I am. I live there.’ He nodded towards the grimy front window of his house which hadn’t seen a wash leather since the Dohertys had left and the front step was unscrubbed, didn’t smell of Lysol and bleach like all the others. Paddy could see Mrs Trott on her hands and knees with a bucket scrubbing her step and willed her to look up and help him finish something he truly wished he had not begun.

The woman wrinkled her nose and, following his gaze, looked past Mrs Trott, down the street towards the docks. ‘Well then,’ she said, ‘we are going to be neighbours. My husband and I are to live here, so your mother had better get her house in order before we arrive, I can tell you. Those nets are filthy and I’m not living next door to that.’ She sniffed with distaste as she bent to look back into the window of Maura and Tommy’s old house.

‘What? How can you be doing that?’ Little Paddy was about to say that his mother’s nets weren’t filthy, but he knew better than to start an argument he couldn’t win. He looked down the road and saw Annie O’Prey, her gleaming white nets twitching at him from the side of the window. He felt in need of protection and for once was reassured to be under the gaze of the four streets’ nosiest neighbour. The woman peered down at little Paddy again, her face a picture of distaste.

‘I think the women of these streets need to know that Margaret Wright is moving in.’ Paddy sucked harder on his thumb. The woman had decided he would be as good a way as any at getting the message across, but his silence made her wonder. She felt a need to fill the silence his lack of response had created. ‘My husband is the new police sergeant, been promoted he has. He’s going to be in charge of what goes on at the docks and I can assure you, bringing order around here will be his first challenge, especially with the O’Prey boys living here. We will be your next-door neighbours, young man, and I’ll tell you this for nothing: my husband is a man who enforces law and order and we aren’t stupid. Nothing anyone says or does gets past my Frank. Do you understand that?’

She bent down until her face was on a level with his own. Her red lipstick had bled into the cracks in her skin that ran away from her top lip and Paddy was transfixed by the faint orange line on her neck where her foundation ended and the white skin on her neck began, for it resembled a noose. She was also now obviously struggling to maintain her composure.

‘What is up with you, boy?’

Paddy swallowed hard, now beyond speech. She turned her head towards Annie O’Prey, still peering around the nets in her window, and refocused her gaze. One of Annie’s boys, Jimmy, was due out of Walton Jail any day now and Paddy guessed she might know that because she smiled a cold and meaningful smile in Annie’s direction. The net curtain fell abruptly and Margaret Wright turned back to little Paddy, who was deeply regretting his decision to talk to her.

For a brief moment, Paddy lost his focus and suddenly he could see Kitty; she was standing at the end of the street, watching him. He froze and stared until his eyes stung and blurred and then, despite not wanting to, he blinked and she was gone.

‘Have you got my meaning, boy?’

Seeing Kitty’s ghost was far preferable to this encounter any day. His instinct was to run, but his feet felt as heavy as lead and refused to move.

‘They didn’t make my Frank a sergeant for nothing, you know. You had better let your mam know that.’ She leant in closer towards him, narrowing her eyes, and he felt a strong desire to clutch hold of his langer before he wet himself. He had been doing so well, but this woman, she had the power to undo all Maura’s good work. He could see the curls of dark hair escaping from under the rim of her bottle-green felt hat. The women on the four streets didn’t wear hats, they wore wire curlers held in place all day long with a headscarf and they only ever came out for the bingo, mass, or a bit of a do down at the Anchor or, in his mam’s case, on rent day. His eyes narrowed back at her – it was the best he could do.

‘You tell your mam that we are moving in next door in the next few days if Mr Heartfelt gets his act together. We are just waiting for the rent book to be handed over.’ She pulled herself upright. ‘Do you know why they are still paying the rent? It’s very odd. I know they had a windfall, but if they aren’t